Armando Paz - Building Peace

Armando Paz is based on a series of strategies:

• Building consciousness (Armando conciencia) - For every young individual that is involved in a gang, thousands aren’t. The project convenes young people, youth organisations and organisations working for youth in Central America who are concerned about the violence, to organise constructive initiatives that promote peaceful coexistence and a culture of legality.
• Building policies and political awareness (Armando motivación política) - Young people are an important engine in a country's development; they are open to new ideas, creative and have the capacity to trigger change. Armando Paz encourages them to work together with other youth and different stakeholders, to transform their reality in their immediate environment: family and community. They have created their first participation and advocacy experiences, developing skills that empower them as active agents of the change they want, developing awareness of their rights and responsibilities as citizens.
• Building media networks (Armando redes de medios) - Armando Paz has established alliances with Discovery Channel, MTV, and mainstream media in each country to spread more positive and realistic images of Central America's youth, promote the recognition of their potential, communicate the project's activities and, most importantly invite young people to share their ideas on how to change the realities of their communities, cities, and countries.
• Building new media (Armando nuevos medios) - Building on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and the power of mobile technology to disseminate key messages amongst young people, Armando Paz delivered "learning by doing" workshops targeted at 120plus social and youth-led organisations that will potentially reach 120,000 young people at risk. These workshops were focused on training young people to creatively use radio, video and other new social media to connect to each other and convey their ideas publicly using minimal resources.
• Building networks of youth as agents of change (Armando redes de jóvenes que quieren ser agentes de cambio en sus países) - According to the project organisers, the Amando Paz website website receives an average of 800 visitors a week and has over 1280 friends and more than 5000 followers in Facebook. Recently, as a result of the photo contest "How do you build peace?", a total of 84 photographs were sent by youth from countries involved in the project, which jointly received 27.000 "likes".

Youth, conflict resolution, peace, democracy, participation

Armando Paz seeks to facilitate and set up a regional platform from which the culture of peace processes led by youth will be sustained. Regional forums are these meeting and sharing spaces. The first regional forum took place in July 2011, which brought together 80 young people - 20 from each country - who presented proposals on promoting peace conditions in their communities. In each country, a project was awarded with a seed fund grant of U.S. $ 5000. These forums about building a culture of peace in the region have served as a space for working groups and dialogue with the Ministers of Education, Culture and Youth of every country in Central America and other key public sector actors, including the private sector.

Armando Paz has also invited business leaders to support the implementation of projects that are being supported with the seed funding awards. The strategy is to advocate for a greater awareness amongst the private and business sector to invest in a better education, offer work opportunities for youth, support the various activities of the project with youth and civil society organisations, as well as the promotion of healthy life skills.